


Variety Show

by telm_393



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Community: daredevilkink, Gen, Other: See Story Notes, Random & Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various fills for the Daredevil kink meme that I didn't want to post as separate fics. All of the stories are separate and there are summaries and warnings (if applicable) before each one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Step Second (and So On)

**Author's Note:**

> Massive content warnings for: depression, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, and vomiting.
> 
> This is a fill for this (http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=523733#cmt523733) prompt: "Just a canonical interrupted suicide with a Foggy who is used to Matt's lows and a Karen who is experiencing it all for the first time."
> 
> PSA: If somebody overdoses on medication, do not induce vomiting, immediately call 911 (in the U.S.) and/or Poison Control, try to keep the person awake and talking, and if that's not possible, put them in rescue position and wait for medical professionals.

Matt doesn't own a gun. 

This is a blessing, because Foggy knows what would happen if he did. Foggy would never get there in time.

Matt's been low, lately. Spaced out, quiet, and fake. Fake smiles, fake stability, just...fake. Foggy can tell at this point, when Matt's getting really low. It's hard for anyone else to tell, probably, but Foggy's just as tuned in to Matt as Matt's tuned in to him.

So when Foggy called Matt to invite him to a night out with Karen and he didn't answer, he figured he might as well check up on him. It's true that he could be out as Daredevil--and doesn't that terrify Foggy, the idea that Matt could be putting his life in danger while he's down--but it's better to check. 

Foggy has a spare key. He usually only uses it in these situations. 

Karen's concerned. Foggy's tried to brush it off, tried to just say, "Maybe he's sick," because that's not a lie. Sick in the head is still sick.

+

Foggy's known Matt for three months, and when he bursts into the room to inform him of the fact that Punjabi girl is totally into him, he sees him sitting on his bed, cross-legged, holding a knife to his wrist. It's a pocket knife. Pocket knives aren't even allowed in the dorms, and Foggy had no idea Matt had one. 

Foggy's brain goes blank with panic. "Hey, Matt," he says because he can't think of anything else to say. 

'Hey, Matt, I see you're feeling a bit suicidal. Wanna talk about it?'

That seems a little blasé, honestly. 

"Hey, Foggy," Matt says hollowly. "Could you leave? I want to be alone."

Foggy almost laughs. "Maybe not, buddy," he says. "How about you give me the knife?"

Matt's not wearing his glasses. His eyes are wet with tears, but the face he's making is mostly one that Foggy would call 'dead inside'.

Foggy really hates himself for not noticing, especially since hindsight is 20/20 and now that he thinks about it, Matt's been stressed and quiet and he's been spending a lot of time lying in his bed. Foggy thought that maybe he was just getting sick or something. 

"Matt?" Foggy says, and his voice is thick with tears that he can't even bring himself to be ashamed about right now. "Please don't do this, just...don't," he finishes weakly. 

"I feel like I'm lying flat on my back," Matt says. "All the time." There's still no emotion in his voice.

Foggy doesn't think he's ever felt this freaked out. He's so freaked out he's almost calm. "But it..." he starts, and then his breathing gets shaky and now he's really crying. "It'll pass, Matt," he says, even though he knows that probably isn't all that comforting. He doesn't know what to say. He's never been in this situation before. He's never even dreamed of feeling this way.

He guesses he's been really, really lucky. 

Foggy sits next to Matt. He's starting to feel nauseous. Matt still has the knife poised over his wrist, ready to slice down.

"Down the road," Matt says. "Not across."

Foggy's trying not to let on how freaked out he is, but he takes the knife from Matt's hand. 

Matt just kind of lets him, like he's too exhausted to fight for his suicide attempt. 

"You should go to sleep," Foggy says. "You're...you're really tired. We can...talk. About this tomorrow. Maybe get help."

A tear runs down Matt's face. Just one. Foggy doesn't know how he does it. "Help," he says. 

"Yeah. Come on. Go to bed. You're tired," Foggy says. "You're just tired," he says again, trying to convince himself way more than he's trying to convince Matt. 

Matt finally lies down on top of his covers. He's asleep in less than a minute. 

Foggy turns the knife into the front desk, says he just found it lying around and he knows those aren't allowed here, so he figured he'd do his duty as a student and as a citizen of the United States of America and bring it in. 

"Don't want anyone getting hurt," he says, shrugging and trying his best to smile. 

When he gets back to the dorm, he grabs every sharp object he can find and hides it in his pillowcase and stuffs it under the bed. 

Foggy's not a Catholic. He's not anything, really. But he lies back in bed and says to the ceiling, "Hail Mary, full of grace..."

+

Matt's apartment is dark, which isn't a surprise, considering the fact that Matt's got no use for light. 

("NLP," Matt says, drunk and giggling. "Nooo light perception.")

He saves a lot on his electricity bill. 

Foggy flicks on the light. 

Karen makes a wounded noise, and Foggy just sighs and then he feels terrible about it, because who in the world gets used to this?

Matt's sitting at his kitchen table. There's a bottle of pills--painkillers, probably, almost full, Matt's terrible at taking painkillers when he needs them, he's one of those ridiculous work through the pain kind of guys--in front of him. The bottle's tipped over, and the pills are spilling out of it. The light of the billboard outside makes the orange of the bottle really pop. 

Matt's picking up the pills and then letting them spill out of his hand, over and over again. 

There's another bottle of pills on the table. It's half empty, and that's when Foggy goes into high gear. 

He walks over to Matt while Karen's still standing stock still and horrified and picks up the bottle. "How many did you take?" he asks. 

Matt mumbles something.

+

They're out of the dorms, just moved into their apartment building, and Foggy's been watching Matt. 

Matt's been spending a lot of time in bed. Foggy's not even sure if he's sleeping. He drags himself to class, he studies, but his movements are listless and by this point Foggy's not falling for his attempts at seeming just like his usual self.

Matt's depressive episodes don't last for more than a month, usually, but they hit hard and pretty often. Matt's never gotten to the point of actually slitting his wrists (not out of lack of desire, Foggy thinks sometimes, but just because he can't muster up the energy to try to kill himself), but Foggy's walked in on him contemplating knives more than once, and there was the time where he actually did take too many pills. He threw them all up, though. 

Foggy's locked up the sharp objects in the apartment and he keeps the key in his pocket. The only knives out are butter knives, and Foggy tries to be discreet when Matt's shaving, but he always knocks on the door if Matt's locked himself in the bathroom for more than five minutes. He knows he's mother henning, Matt complains about it enough, but Foggy really, really doesn't want his best friend to die, which he doesn't think is unreasonable. 

Today Foggy finds Matt on the roof, leaning over the railing precariously. Foggy fucking hates heights, but he walks over to Matt and tries really hard not to look down. "Hey, Matt," he says, more casually than he did the first time, or the third time, or the fifth time. This is number thirteen of the Serious Contemplations of Suicide Foggy's witnessed, or at least, he thinks it is.

"Hey, Foggy," Matt says. "Could you leave? I want to be alone."

Foggy's so used to this that the feeling of deja vu he got the first few times they had this conversation is all but gone. 

"Maybe not, buddy," Foggy says. "You should come down. It's cold up here."

Matt leans further over the railing and Foggy finally breaks and grabs his shoulder, pulling him back as he feels a sharp spike of panic. 

Matt blinks. He's not wearing his glasses. For some reason, when this happens, he never does. It's a good way to tell what's going on when it's something like this, though. If Matt's on the roof, he could be contemplating life or whatever the fuck it is that Matt does, or he could be considering jumping. Without the glasses, Foggy's pretty sure of what it is. 

"Fifteen floors down," Matt says. "What does it look like down there?"

Foggy swallows down his fear and quickly glances down and back up, head spinning. "Lots of concrete," he says. "Nothing much to see."

"That's what I thought," Matt says. "I bet it's not that bad. Falling."

Foggy's had way, way too many of these morbid conversations. "Maybe not. But it's probably better to just stay on solid ground, right?"

"I feel heavy," Matt says. "Like lead."

Matt gets poetic when he's like this. Foggy's got a whole file of Matt's suicidal descriptions of depression in his head. Sometimes when he feels beyond frustrated at Matt's behavior when he's low, he thinks about them and he doesn't really get it, but it makes him less angry. Being angry doesn't work in this situation, it never did. Panic isn't great either. 

Foggy says, "Nelson and Murdock, right? Our own practice."

"Nelson and Murdock," Matt whispers.

"Would kinda be a shame to miss out on that. I mean, if you went splat."

Matt hums. It might be an agreement.

"C'mon, let's go downstairs. You should go to sleep. You're tired. You're just tired."

Matt takes Foggy's elbow and eventually he's in bed, asleep. Safe for now.

Foggy wonders when the fuck this happened to them, and pours himself a drink.

+

"How many did you take?" Foggy says, more firmly, grabbing Matt's shoulders. 

Matt shrugs. 

Foggy checks the mostly empty bottle of painkillers. "Matt!" he says, louder. "This is important! How many did you take?"

"I don't know," Matt says. "Not like I counted."

"Right, smartass," Foggy mutters, grabbing one of Matt's shoulders. "Help me get him to the bathroom," he tells Karen, who looks like she's about to cry.

She shakes her head, though, like she's clearing it, and nods, walking over to them with purpose. "Time to get up, Matt," she murmurs, low and comforting, and Matt lets himself be hauled to his feet and practically dragged to the bathroom.

He kneels in front of the toilet--he's been there before in this exact situation--and Foggy grabs his toothbrush and tells Matt, "Open your mouth," and then slots the flat end down his throat.

Gagging seizes Matt's body and he throws up. Foggy makes a face at the pills floating in bile and fits the toothbrush down Matt's throat again until he's dry heaving painfully. 

Matt's panting, eyes drooping. Foggy checks his pulse. A little high. Fine, though. 

Karen's rubbing Matt's back, humming. There are tears running down her cheeks, and her voice is completely steady. 

She's doing better than Foggy did the first time. It's a good thing that Matt's so weirdly agreeable when he's like this, though. Foggy's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to stop him if he got aggressive about it.

"Let's get you to bed," Foggy says. 

Matt nods and gets up off the floor with Karen's help, leans on her as they head to his room. He collapses on top of the covers. 

"Go to sleep," Foggy says. "You're tired. You're just tired."


	2. Smile!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt, Foggy, and Karen celebrate their birthdays and everything is wonderful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fill for this (http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=841429#cmt841429) prompt, which asked for birthday celebrations. 
> 
> There is literally not a single content warning for this fic, except for maybe excessive fluff.

"Hey, Matt. Matt!"

"Wha'?" Matt asks, turning over in bed in the general direction of Foggy's voice. "Foggy, why? Why are you...why are you doing this to me?"

"Happy birthday!"

"What? It's not my birthday."

"Yeah, it is. I know because I checked, don't ask how."

"I don't have a birthday."

"Uh...you were born today. Which means you do have a birthday."

"I don't celebrate it."

"Too bad! You're going to celebrate it today. We're taking the day off."

"When do you even study?"

"Come on, get out of bed."

"Fine, fine," Matt grumbles, sitting up and running his fingers through his hair, bemused. Last time he celebrated his birthday he was eleven and it was just a couple of weeks before his dad died. They had cake. Matt honestly thought that after a while you got too old to celebrate birthdays, until he realized that they seemed to hold some importance for other people, and then he'd just been confused.

But...

"Are we gonna have cake?" Matt asks tentatively, feeling sheepish.

"Yeah, dude, whatever you want."

"Um. Can we get vanilla?"

Foggy laughs. "Whatever you want, buddy. Let's go."

Matt smiles.

+

"Hey, Foggy!" Matt yells obnoxiously close to Foggy's ear.

"Jesus motherfucking Christ!" Foggy yelps, rolling out of bed while Matt laughs. "What the hell?"

"It's your birthday!" Matt says.

"I know, but, dude, you could've let me sleep in."

"Nope! We're picking up Karen and taking the day off. We're gonna get one of those gross cakes you like."

"They're chocolate ice cream cakes, Matt, they're not gross."

"Let's go, let's go!"

"You're weirdly excited about this," Foggy says.

"Yeah, well, you're always weirdly excited about my birthday, so we're even. Come on!"

Foggy laughs. "Okay, dude, okay."

"I got you a present," Matt says. "It's a book."

"Of course it is."

"It's about great closing statements in history."

"That actually sounds cool," Foggy says. He doesn't mention the fact that usually people don't tell their friends what they got them for their birthday, because he has many times before and Matt still hasn't grasped the concept of surprises.

"It is cool," Matt agrees, almost giddy.

Foggy grins. Birthdays always seem to bring out the kid in Matt, and it's infectious. 

"Let's do this."

+

"Karen! Karen! Karen!" she hears when she puts her phone to her ear. 

She pulls her phone away and stares at it for a second blearily, because it's too early in the morning for a Matt who sounds like he's on a sugar rush. Also it's just weird. 

"Matt?" she asks, looking over at her digital clock. "It's seven in the morning. It's Sunday. Is there work? Did I forget there's work?"

"It's your birthday!" Matt says. 

"It...is?"

"We're picking you up," Matt says decisively. "We're picking you up and we're going to have cake and I got you a teddy bear because Foggy says your room's really bare and you like looking at the bears in the window. It's pink. Also we got you a balloon. Foggy says it has a cat on it."

"Are you high?" she asks. 

"I had seven cups of coffee in two hours."

Karen sputters. "Seven? How are you not dead?"

"Hey!" Matt protests, and then there's another voice on the line.

"Sorry about that. Matt gets weirdly excited about birthdays. I think he's trying to make up for all the ones he didn't celebrate as a kid."

"I didn't celebrate birthdays as a kid either."

"Yeah, well, that's just not a possibility with Nelson and Murdock. We actually are going to pick you up, so you should get ready."

"So early?"

"Birthdays are a full day thing with us. You only turn twenty-seven once, Karen."

"How did you even know--" Karen starts asking before Foggy hangs up. She stares at her phone like it might have some insight into her weird-ass best friends, and then she shakes her head.

Her room could use some sprucing up, honestly.

When Matt and Foggy show up, both wearing identical dorky grins, Karen tries to hide her smile behind her hand, but she can't, because in the end she spends the whole day smiling.


	3. Cocked Pistol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy witnesses Matt's anger issues for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for: major anger management issues, violent behavior (though only directed towards inanimate objects), and a brief verbal description of some very graphic violence
> 
> This is a short fill for this (http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=855765#cmt855765) prompt.

Matt's usually cool as a cucumber, all charming smiles and pleasantries, which is why the first time Foggy actually sees him angry, it's kind of a surprise. Like, a major, major surprise.

Because Matt's high-strung and the child of a boxer, sure, and he actually goes to the gym, unlike Foggy, but Foggy always figured that Matt was the type of guy who's almost aggressive but never quite gets to the point of his anger boiling over, even though sometimes he gets angry and there's something about the way his jaw clenches and his hands white-knuckle his cane that makes Foggy uncomfortable.

The first time Foggy sees Matt really go off, it's because of a phone call that Foggy doesn't hear the other end of. Matt's voice is tight during it, all "oh, okay" and "thank you for informing me" and "no, it's fine, I understand" but it's when he hangs up the phone and puts it down on his desk loudly that Foggy notices that Matt's started breathing deeply, the kind of breathing that people do when they're counting to ten and it's not working.

Matt sucks in a gasping breath, and Foggy realizes that nope, he's never actually seen Matt angry. Matt stands up, bracing himself against his desk, shoulders heaving up and down, trying to get himself under control.

"Fuck," Matt says to himself. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!" he raises his voice on the last one and bangs his hand against his desk.

"Woah, Matt, buddy," Foggy says, thoroughly freaked out. "Calm down, take deep breaths, it's fine--"

Matt lets out a sound that might be a snarl and grabs the lamp on his desk, picks it up, and throws it to the ground.

"Jesus, Matt!" Foggy says as the lamp's lightbulb shatters against the floor.

Matt turns on his heel towards Foggy's voice, and Foggy moves back because he's honestly never felt scared of Matt before. "I swear to fucking God," he's saying to himself, or rather, to someone who isn't in the room at the moment. "I swear to fucking God, I will claw your eyes out, asshole, I will skin you alive and I will _laugh_!" On the last word he actually lashes out, clearly wanting to hit _something_ , and puts his fist through Foggy's full-length mirror.

"Matt!" Foggy yells from his place jammed against the wall as far away from the nuclear meltdown going on in his room as possible. "Fuck, Matt!"

The pain seems to mostly snap Matt out of it, and his chest is heaving and he raises a shaking hand to the fist he hit the mirror with. "I'm bleeding," he says.

"Yeah," Foggy says. "Yeah, not actually surprising. Jesus, Matt."

"I thought it was the wall," Matt explains. "I thought I was going to hit the wall."

"How would that possibly have been better?"

Matt stumbles towards his bed and sits down heavily. "Sorry," he says. "About your mirror. About..." He lets out a short, humorless laugh. "All this."

"Matt," Foggy says. "Matt, this isn't...that wasn't...you're bleeding. What the hell was that about?"

"I just..." Matt says, and then he cuts himself off. "I just got mad," he explains.

Foggy leans against the wall, too freaked out to actually go over and sit next to Matt, too aware of the fact that Matt was strong enough to smash that mirror almost completely and mangle his lamp and just--"You got mad," Foggy says, feeling out of breath, like he just ran for miles. "No kidding. No kidding."

On the other side of the room, Matt's breathing evens out.


	4. A Good Catholic Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt Murdock has a secret.
> 
> No. 
> 
> Not that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags for this chapter: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Religion, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Matt, POV Father Lantom
> 
> Massive content warnings for childhood sexual abuse, but there are no graphic depictions of it. 
> 
> Fill for this prompt on the kink meme: https://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=570581
> 
> I named Father Lantom Louis because I am under the impression that he goes by his title and his last name and I didn't think it would make sense for him to go by 'Father Lantom' in his third person limited POV.

Matt sits in church every Sunday, the breathing of the other children a roaring ocean in his ears, the thumping of their hearts a drumbeat thrumming through every part of him, the heat from their bodies making him wilt like a weed under too much sun, and listens to Father Jameson speak. He listens to the voice that whispers in his ear at night, that tells him to hush when they’re all alone in the church, and imagines the hands that make his skin crawl flipping through the Bible.

Matt asks God for deliverance, but God doesn’t hear him.

There must be a reason for this, Matt thinks desperately, clutching his rosary so hard it hurts. There must be a reason. He shudders because he brushed his teeth so many times tonight but he can still taste the lemon drops Father Jameson gives him, the ones that he always insists Matt eat, though Matt’s never sure why.

Every night, Matt prays, and every time he steps into the place that is meant to be a house of God, he can feel the Devil surrounding Father Jameson like a cloud of smoke, clinging to Matt like sick perfume every time Father Jameson touches him.

The Devil has always followed Matt everywhere, especially after his years training with Stick, but he doesn’t think its essence has ever permeated his skin like it does around Father Jameson.

Eventually, Father Jameson breathes the Devil into Matt through his lips like he’s resuscitating him instead of taking his breath away.

Father Jameson works at St. Agnes for three years, and by the time those years have passed and he gets another job, the Devil that has been Matt’s constant companion for his whole life has made a home inside of him, coiled like a snake, ready to strike out.

By the time he leaves, Father Jameson has dragged Matt into the Devil’s arms and left him to burn.

Matt doesn’t understand why he lived through that suffering, but then one night he hears a little girl crying, one night he hears Child Protective Services saying there’s nothing they can do, one night he thinks: _oh_.

+

Matthew is sitting on the bench outside of the church, looking solemn and vaguely uncomfortable. That’s not a surprise, not as of late, and Louis wonders if this will be one of those days he manages to coax Matthew in for a latte.

It’s one of Louis’s jobs to counsel the troubled, and he hasn’t met someone as troubled as Matthew in a long time. It feels like every time he comes by he’s more beaten down and haunted than before, even when he’s not visibly injured. There are things Matthew’s not telling even Louis, though, and he knows that. There’s something Matthew’s been wanting to say for a very long time, but every time he starts saying it, every time he gets out a, “Father, there’s something—” or “There’s something I—” he ends up swallowing his words like he’s swallowing bile and then saying something relatively innocuous, or what passes as innocuous in the world Matthew Murdock lives in.

And that doesn’t include all of those times that he’s opened his mouth to say something, only to draw the words back into himself with a pained inhale.

Louis has become very good at figuring people out. It’s hard not to, being a priest.

And it’s clear as day that there’s something Matthew desperately wants to say, some secret that torments him so much that he can’t even bring himself to tell it under the seal of confession, even when Louis already knows about what he gets up to at night.

Louis doesn’t think Matthew’s killed anyone, he honestly doesn’t, not for reasons that aren’t pure self-defense. Matthew doesn’t have it in him to kill without a very good reason. Besides, Matthew shares about his alternate life, though he does so in fits and starts and cryptic, quietly furious statements.

Louis has a feeling that this isn’t about Daredevil, and though feelings don’t hold up in a court of law, law is not his field.

“Hello, Matthew,” Louis says pleasantly, stopping next to the bench Matthew’s so attached to, ignoring the chill of the early morning air.

“Father Lantom,” Matthew says stiffly.

“How are you?”

Matthew clenches his jaw before saying, “Fine.”

It’s a lie, but it’s always a lie. “Latte?” Louis asks casually.

Matthew takes a deep breath and Louis thinks he’s going to say no before his body relaxes and he says, “Sure.”

“Come in.”

They sit in the dining room. The church is so often empty, especially this early in the day, before Matthew even starts woking.

“The Devil,” Matthew says without preamble and without prompting.

“What about him?”

Matthew does what he’s been doing so often—he opens his mouth and then closes it decisively.

“Matthew,” Louis finally says. “Am I wrong, or is there something you’ve been dying to say for a while?”

Matthew bows his head. He moves his latte around the table by the handle of the mug, dragging it back and forth, back and forth. “You’re right,” he says. So serious, the Murdock boy. Always so serious.

“As you know, Seal of Confession always applies. Even over coffee.”

“Yes,” Matthew says. “Yes, I know.”

“So,” Louis says. “The Devil.”

“I met someone,” Matt says with effort. “When I was younger. Little. In the orphanage, I met someone. You said that when that man killed Gahiji you saw the Devil in his eyes.”

“Yes.”

“I was already blind. I haven’t seen anything in anyone’s eyes for a long time. But I could feel it. He had the Devil inside of him, I could feel it around him like a cloud, like…perfume.” Matt stops speaking and the silence drags on.

“Go on,” Louis says gently.

“He was a priest,” Matt says. “Father Jameson. He was at St. Agnes for three years, and he started off by giving me candy.”

Louis closes his eyes and then opens them, steeling himself for the rest of this story. He knows where this is going. “Yes,” he says mildly, making sure to try and keep any tightness out of his voice. He is a priest, he’s the keeper of so many secrets and he’s heard this story before, though it’s different every time, and he’s never had any experience hearing about a monster of this kind who took the cloth, though he knows it has happened many times. He knows of the anger and disgust and sadness he feels whenever he hears about the way the Church has been tainted by these people.

“Lemon candy.” Matt lets out a brief laugh, humorless. There’s a smile on his face that’s tinted with the memory of some faraway horror. “I can’t eat it anymore. Just smelling it makes me throw up. But I liked it at the time. And he talked to me, he was my friend. He listened to what I had to say. Seal of Confession, right?”

“Right,” Louis says when he realizes that Matthew’s waiting for a response.

“And then it started getting strange, he started touching me, saying things that I didn’t completely understand but that I knew a priest shouldn’t be saying. He talked about God, about the way God understands that some people can’t help themselves, not in the face of something so beautiful.”

“God is always an excuse for people like that,” Louis says. “Not someone to be devoted to.”

Matt pauses, tilts his head, thinking. “Yeah. I guess.” He takes a deep breath. “He _touched_ me,” he says, whispers it faintly. “He did things that…you know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yes,” Louis says. “I do.”

“The Devil,” Matthew says. “I’ve got the Devil inside of me. And Father Jameson was just kindling for the fire.”

“Matthew, what he did to you was not your fault. God has not turned his back on you, He never did. What that man did to you was a mockery of everything the Church stands for.”

“I never said it was my fault,” Matthew says, voice shaking. A tear snakes out from under his glasses, and he ducks his head, clearly embarrassed.

“No,” Louis says. “But I’m not stupid.”

“Confession just became a reason to keep more secrets,” Matthew finally admits, and then he covers his face as it crumples.

He cries quietly. Louis thinks of the way the Church is a place of healing.

He thinks of the way that for so many, it became a place of wounding, of cuts that won’t stop opening.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Father Lantom says. He says it for everyone who never said it. He says it for everyone who has passed through Matthew’s life who can’t be forgiven. “You may believe that the Devil is inside you, but so is the saint you were named for. He rests inside of you, and of the good and evil in your life, the good has triumphed. You chose the side of the angels, and that is more than can ever be said for the Devil you met when you were a child.”

Matt breathes in and out shakily. Picks up his head. “Do you really believe that?” he asks.

And Louis says, “Forever and ever, amen.”


	5. Polígloto/Polyglot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brett tiene un don para los idiomas.
> 
> ___
> 
> Brett has a gift for learning languages.
> 
> (The Spanish language version of this fic comes first, if you skip down you'll find the English language version.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this prompt: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/2760.html?thread=4835784#cmt4835784
> 
> Sesenta Por ciento de los habitantes de Nueva York hablan otro idioma. Es obvio que Matt, Karen, y Foggy son parte de los otros 40%. Claire habla español. Quizás Brett puede hablar otro idioma? Francés o que?  
> ____
> 
> Basically: Brett speaks another language. What is it?
> 
> I went with Brett speaking a lot of other languages.
> 
> (I will admit that this fic was mostly written to see if I can write fiction in Spanish. I can, so that's cool.)
> 
> ____
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> No warnings.

Brett tiene un don para los idiomas. Es una cosa que el nunca a entendido, pero es casi fácil para el. Puede aprender otros idiomas en poquísimo tiempo. El nunca era un buen estudiante—en verdad, podrías decir que era un pésimo estudiante—pero en su primer año de secundaria si le fue bien en una clase: español. Su clase de inglés? Un desastre. Pero español—eso podia hacer. Lo hacia tan bien que se matriculo en dos otras clases de idiomas después de su primer año, aleman y francés, y en las dos saco notas altísimas. 

Un misterio. 

Pero—bueno, es un talento, que Brett puede aprender idiomas en cualquier sitio, en verdad. Probablemente aprendió mas español viendo telenovelas que en su clase. Solo pasa. Escucha idiomas por suficiente tiempo, lee suficiente en ese idioma, ve television en ese idioma, lo que sea, y lo aprende. 

Entonces Brett colecciona idiomas como otras personas coleccionan estampillas.

(Aunque el no sabe cuantas personas a veces coleccionan estampillas sin tratar.) 

Español, aleman, y francés en la secundaria. Aprendió italiano por que le gustaba ir a un pequeño restaurante italiano en Hell’s Kitchen y todos en ese sitio hablaban el idioma y un día decidió preguntar como decir “bienvenido” en italiano y solo creció de ahi. Aprendió mandarín de una policía que era de Beijing, una amiga, y cantonés de otra. Cada vez que comenzaba a aprender un idioma con cualquier persona, acababa en la biblioteca, sacando libros y cassettes sobre cualquier idioma que era este año o mes. 

Cuando tiene treinta y tres años y todo en Hell’s Kitchen se va al diablo (ja, Hell’s Kitchen, al diablo, y Foggy dice que no tiene sentido del humor) puede hablar siete idiomas fluidamente, algunos mejor que otros, si, pero todavía no esta nada mal. 

Ayuda, poder hablar tantos idiomas, aunque eso significa que todos van a Brett cuando quieren saber que estaba diciendo este mafioso Russo o este miembro del Yakuza (ay, por que hay tanto crimen organizado en Hell’s Kitchen? No tienen otros sitios que aterrorizar? Mala suerte). Brett tiene un arsenal de insultos creativos en su mente, cortesía de los criminales de Hell’s Kitchen. 

Brett es conocido por todos sus colegas como el pata de los idiomas, y honestamente podría ser peor. Podría ser conocido como el policía favorito de Daredevil—espera.

Brett no sabe por que Daredevil siempre le esta dando criminales, casi como regalos. A el específicamente. El es el policía de Daredevil ahora, y honestamente da un poco de vergüenza. Brett cree que sus colegas (los que todavía están) se están poniendo celosos. 

Aunque no puede decir que Daredevil no esta ayudando—obviamente no puede decir eso de verdad por que Daredevil a roto como mil leyes—ahora que el numero de policía en Hell’s Kitchen a…caído.

Pero Brett ya no tiene la reputación de saber como hablar un montón de idiomas. Sus colegas se acuerdan de eso, obviamente, pero en verdad es mas interesante que Daredevil tiene algún tipo de fijación con el. 

La vida nunca a sido mas complicada. 

Eso es la razón que Brett comienza a ir a un restaurante nuevo cuando esta en break por que el restaurante italiano se destruyo en el incidente (incidente, por favor, extraterrestres, fueron extraterrestres)—necesita una rutina.

Para hacer breve una larga historia, así es como aprende lituano.  
_________

Brett has a gift for learning languages. It’s something he’s never understood, but it’s almost easy for him. He can learn other languages in no time at all. He was never a good student—actually, you could say he was a terrible student—but he did do well in one class in his first year of high school: Spanish. His English class? Total disaster. But Spanish—that he could do. He did it so well that he signed up for two other language classes after his first year of high school, French and German, and he got ridiculously high grades in both. 

A mystery.

But—well, it’s a talent, that Brett can learn languages from wherever. He probably learned more Spanish watching Mexican soap operas than his actual class. It just happens. He hears a language spoken for enough time, reads enough in that language, watches TV in that language, whatever, and he learns it. 

So Brett collects languages like other people collect stamps. 

(Though he’s not sure how many people collect stamps without trying.)

Spanish, German, and French in high school. He learned Italian because he liked this little Italian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen and everyone in that place spoke the language and one day he decided to ask how to say “welcome” and it just spiraled from there. He learned Mandarin from a cop who was from Beijing, and Cantonese from another. And every time he started learning a language from anyone, he’d end up at the library, checking out books and cassettes over whatever language he’d stumbled into this year or month. 

When he’s thirty three years old and everything in Hell’s Kitchen goes to the Devil (ha, Hell’s Kitchen, to the Devil—and Foggy says he doesn’t have a sense of humor) he can speak seven languages fluently, some better than others, yeah, but it’s still not half bad.

It helps, being able to speak so many languages, even though it also means that everyone goes to Brett when they want to know what this Russian mobster or member of the Yakuza or the Triads was saying (Jesus, why is there so much organized crime in Hell’s Kitchen? Don’t they have other places to terrorize? Bad luck). Brett has an arsenal of creative insults in his mind, courtesy of the criminals of Hell’s Kitchen.

Brett is known as the language guy among his colleagues, and it could honestly be worse. He could be known as Daredevil’s favorite police officer—wait.

Brett doesn’t know why Daredevil’s always giving him criminals, kind of like gifts. To him specifically. He’s Daredevil’s police officer now, and it’s honestly just kind of embarrassing. Brett’s also pretty sure that his colleagues (the ones who are left) are getting kind of jealous. 

Still, he can’t say that Daredevil isn’t helping—obviously he can’t really say it out loud because Daredevil’s broken like a thousand laws—now that the number of police officers in Hell’s Kitchen has…dwindled. 

But this means Brett no longer has the reputation of being the guy who speaks a bunch of languages. His colleagues remember that, obviously, but it is more interesting that he’s the officer Daredevil fixates on for some reason. 

Life has never been more complicated. 

That’s the reason Brett starts going to a new restaurant during his breaks because the Italian restaurant was destroyed in the Incident (the Incident, please, aliens, it was aliens)—he needs a routine.

Long story short, that’s how he learns Lithuanian.


End file.
